“Don’t you speak any more of Stella. I won’t have it. Go to India, indeed—my little girl! I will see you—further first. I will see you at the bottom of the sea first! No. If you can count with me, something like, you can send your lawyer to me. If you can’t, do you think I’m a man to put pounds again’ your shillin’s? Not I! And I advise you just to give it up, Sir Charles Somers, and speak no more about Stella to me.”
It was with the most intense astonishment that Charlie Somers found himself out of doors, going humbly back along that drive by which he had approached so short a time before, as he thought, his bride, his happiness, and his luncheon. He went dismally away without any of them, stupefied, not half conscious what had happened; his tail more completely between his legs, to use his own simile, than whipped dog ever had. He had left all his shillings on the table laid out in two shining rows. But he did not think of his shillings. He could not think. His consternation made him speechless both in body and in soul.
It was not till late in the afternoon, when he had regained his self-command a little, that he began to ask himself the question, What would Stella do? Ah, what would Stella do? That was another side of the question altogether.
CHAPTER XIII.
There was great consternation at Steephill when Somers came back, not indeed so cowed as when he left the Cliff, but still with the aspect more or less of a man who had been beaten and who was extremely surprised to find himself so. He came back, to make it more remarkable, while the diminished party were still at luncheon, and sat down humbly in the lowest place by the side of the governess to partake of the mutton and rice pudding which Lady Jane thought most appropriate when the family was alone. Algy was the only stranger left of all the large party which had dispersed that morning, the few remaining men having gone out to shoot; and to Algy, as an invalid, the roast mutton was of course quite appropriate.
“What luck! without even your lunch!” they cried out—Algy with a roar (the fellow was getting as strong as an elephant) of ridicule and delight.
“As you see,” said Sir Charles with a solemnity which he could not shake off. The very governess divined his meaning, and that sharp little Janey—the horrid little thing, a mite of fourteen. “Oh, didn’t Stella ask you to stay to lunch? Didn’t they give you anything to eat after your walk?” that precocious critic cried. And Sir Charles felt with a sensation of hatred, wishing to kill them all, that his own aspect was enough to justify all their jokes. He was as serious as a mustard-pot; he could not conjure up a laugh on his face; he could not look careless and indifferent or say a light word. His tail was between his legs; he felt it, and he felt sure that everybody must see it, down to the little boys, who, with spoonfuls of rice suspended, stared at him with round blue eyes; and he dared not say, “Confound the little beggars!” before Lady Jane.
“What is the matter?” she asked him, hurrying him after luncheon to her own room away from the mocking looks of the governess—she too mixing herself up with it!—and the gibes of Algy. “For goodness’ sake,” she cried, “don’t look as if you had been having a whipping, Charlie Somers! What has been done to you? Have you quarrelled with Stella on the way?”
Sir Charles walked to the window, pulling his moustache, and stood there looking out, turning his back on Lady Jane. A window is a great resource to a man in trouble. “Old man turned me off,” he said.
“What? What? The old man turned you off? Oh!” cried Lady Jane in a tone of relief; “so long as it was only the old man!”